Dr KARL SHUKER

Zoologist, media consultant, and science writer, Dr Karl Shuker is also one of the best known cryptozoologists in the world. Author of such seminal works as Mystery Cats of the World (1989), The Lost Ark: New and Rediscovered Animals of the 20th Century (1993; greatly expanded in 2012 as The Encyclopaedia of New and Rediscovered Animals), In Search of Prehistoric Survivors (1995), and more recently Extraordinary Animals Revisited (2007), Dr Shuker's Casebook (2008), Karl Shuker's Alien Zoo: From the Pages of Fortean Times (2010), Cats of Magic, Mythology, and Mystery (2012), and Mirabilis: A Carnival of Cryptozoology and Unnatural History (2013), his many fans have been badgering him to join the blogosphere for years. The CFZ Blog Network is proud to have finally persuaded him to do so.

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Thursday, 19 March 2015

I have already discussed on ShukerNature the
prospect that certain serpentiform sea monsters might be still-undiscovered
giant marine eels – Dr Bernard Heuvelmans's 'super-eel' category of sea serpent
(click here). Similarly, a number of
freshwater mystery beasts reported from Britain and elsewhere in the world may
also conceivably be unusually large eels - a thought-provoking possibility previously
visited on ShukerNature in relation to reports from ancient times of supposed
giant blue eels inhabiting India's Ganges River (click here), and now revisited in the following
selection of additional eye-opening examples.

NEVER BOTH A BEITHIR

The Loch Ness monster (LNM) may well be Scotland's best known freshwater mystery beast, but it is
not this country's only one. Far less familiar yet no less intriguing in its
own way is the beithir. In 1994, a correspondent to the English magazine Athene
published two fascinating articles containing various modern-day beithir
sightings. During early 1975, he encountered a fisherman near Inverness who claimed that he and four others once sighted a
beithir lying coiled in shallow water close to the edge of a deep gorge
upstream of the Falls of Kilmorack. When it realised that it had been observed, however, it thrashed
wildly about before finally swimming up the gorge near BeaufortCastle and disappearing. The fishermen estimated its length at around 10 ft.

Four months later, the Athene correspondent
learnt of another sighting, this time offshore of Eilean Aigas, an island in
the River Beauly, Highland. He was also informed by a keeper at Strathmore
that during the 1930s his wife's parents had seen beithirs moving overland at Loch a' Mhuillidh, near Glen Strathfarrar and the mountain of Sgurr na Lapaich. After discussing these reports with various zoological
colleagues, he considered that the beithir was probably an extra-large variety
of eel – fishes that are well known for their ability to leave the water and
move overland to forage when circumstances necessitate, and even to sustain
themselves out of water for protracted periods.

The European eel, painting from 1837 (public domain)

Indeed, the Athene correspondent was informed
by a Devon farmer that during the extremely harsh winter of
1947, his mother had been badly frightened to discover a number of eels alive
and well in the farm's hayloft, where they had evidently been sheltering since
the freezing over of the nearby river some time earlier. The rest of the family
came to see this wonder, including the farmer himself (then still a boy), and
his father confirmed that they were indeed eels, and not snakes (as his mother
had initially assumed).

IS NESSIE A EUNUCH EEL?

The LNM (always assuming that it actually exists,
of course!) has been labelled as many things by many people – a surviving
plesiosaur, an unknown species of long-necked seal, and a wayward sturgeon
being among the most popular identities proffered over the years. However, some
eyewitnesses and zoological authorities – notably the late Dr Maurice Burton –
have favoured a giant eel, possibly up to 30 ft long.

Under normal circumstances, the common or European eel
Anguilla anguilla
does not exceed 5 ft, and even the conger eel Conger conger (one
of the world's largest eel species, rivalled only by certain moray eels) rarely
exceeds 10 ft.
However, ichthyological researchers have revealed that growth in eels is more
rapid in confined bodies of water (such as a loch), in water that is not
subjected to seasonal temperature changes (a condition met with in the deeper
portions of a deep lake, like Loch Ness), and is not uniform (some specimens
grow much faster than others belonging to the same species).

Collectively, therefore, these factors support the
possibility that abnormally large eels do indeed exist in Loch Ness. Moreover,
sightings of such
fishes have been claimed by divers here. Also
of significance is the fact that eels will sometimes swim on their side at or
near the water surface, yielding the familiar humped profile described by Nessie
eyewitnesses. And a 18-30-ft-long eel could certainly produce the sizeable
wakes and other water disturbances often reported for this most famous – and
infamous – of all aquatic monsters.

The
conger eel (public domain)

Consequently, I
would not be at all surprised if the presence of extra-large eels in Loch Ness
is conclusively demonstrated one day. However, I cannot reconcile any kind of
eel with the oft-reported vertical head-and-neck (aka 'periscope') category of
LNM sightings, nor with the land LNM sightings that have described a clearly-visible
four-limbed, long-necked, long-tailed animal.

Yet regardless of what creature these latter observations
feature (assuming once again their validity), there is no reason why Loch Ness
should not contain some extra-large eels too. After all, any loch that can
boast a volume of roughly 1.8 cubic miles must surely have sufficient room for
more than one type of monster!

In recent years, the giant eel identity for Nessie
has been modified by some cryptozoological researchers to yield a creature as
remarkable in itself as any bona fide monster – namely, a giant eunuch eel. It has been suggested that Nessie may be a
gigantic, sterile or eunuch specimen of the common eel – one that did not swim
out to sea and spawn but instead stayed in the loch, grew exceptionally long
(25-30 ft), lived to a
much greater age than normal, and was rendered sterile by some currently-undetermined
factor present in this and other deep, cold, northern lakes.

This is
undeniably a fascinating, thought-provoking theory, but Dr Scott McNaught,
Professor of Lake Biology at CentralMichiganUniversity, has stated
that even if such eels did arise, they would tend to grow thicker rather than
longer. Nevertheless, giant eels remain a distinct possibility in relation to
some of the world’s more serpentiform lake monsters on record.

MONSTER EELS IN THE MASCARENES

The concept of giant freshwater eels is by no means
limited to Britain. For example: a number of deep pools in the
Mascarene island of Réunion, near Mauritius, in the Indian Ocean, are
supposedly inhabited by gigantic landlocked eels.

In a letter to The Field magazine, published
on 10 February 1934,
Courtenay Bennett recalled seeing during the 1890s when Consul at Réunion a
dead specimen that had been caught in one such pool, the Mare à Poule d'Eaux, which
is said to be very deep in places. It was so immense that "steaks as thick
as a man's thighs were cut" from its flesh.

According to native testimony, moreover, during the
heavy winter rains the giant eels could apparently be seen circling along the
sides of this lake, searching for a way out. Being so exposed, however, they
were prime targets for local hunters, who would catch them using a harpoon and
a rope hitched round a tree. Their flesh would then be sold for food in a
neighbouring village.

EXTRA-LARGE EELS IN JAPAN?

Several of Japan's biggest lakes are associated with accounts of freshwater
eels reputedly much larger than typical specimens on record from these
localities. A concise coverage of such creatures appeared in a detailed article
concerning Japanese giant mystery fishes that was written by Brent Swancer and posted
on 30 April 2014 to the Mysterious Universe website (click here to access the full article) and reads as follows:

Various locations in Japan have had reports of
huge eels far larger than any known native species.

Workers doing
construction on a floodgate on the Edo river reported coming
across enormous eels measuring 2 meters (6.6 feet) long. According to the account, four of the
eels were spotted and some of the workers even attempted to capture one, as the
eels appeared to be rather lethargic and slow moving. They were unsuccessful as
they did not have the equipment to properly catch one. Upon returning to the
scene later on with the tools they needed, they found that the mysterious giant
eels were nowhere to be seen.

Another account comes
from LakeBiwa, which is in ShigaPrefecture, and is the largest
freshwater lake in Japan. In the 1980s, there
were several reports of giant eels inhabiting the lake.

One such sighting was
made by a large group of people aboard one of the lakes many pleasure boats.
Startled ferry passengers reported seeing several very large eels swimming at
the surface far from shore. The eels were described as being around 3 meters (around 10 feet) long, and a silvery blue color. The eels
appeared to be leisurely gliding along beside the boat and were observed for
around 15 minutes before moving off out of sight.

A fisherman on the same
lake reported actually hooking and reeling in an eel that was reported to be
around 8 feet in length. In this case,
the eel was kept and eaten. Another fisherman on the lake reported seeing a
similarly sized eel rooting through mud in shallow water near the shore.

Japan's Lake Biwa, as seen from
Higashiamagoidake (public domain)

Interestingly, the giant blue eels of Lake Biwa
readily recall comparably-described mystery beasts from India's Ganges River as
reported by several early chroniclers (click here
for my earlier-mentioned ShukerNature coverage of these latter cryptids).

GIANT EELS IN OHIO?

Although giant
eels are a popular identity for water monsters, of both the marine and
freshwater variety, because the size of eels is notoriously difficult to gauge
accurately in the wild due to their sinuous movements and usual lack of
background scale for precise length estimation this means that eyewitness
reports of giant specimens are normally difficult to take seriously – which is
why the following account is so significant. On 3 February 2015, Facebook
friend Chris R. Richards from Covington, Washington State, USA, posted on the
page of the Facebook group Cryptozoology the following hitherto-unpublished
report of a huge freshwater eel that he and his father had personally witnessed
during the 1990s:

I believe whole heartily in giant eels. I saw one as
long as my canoe back in the later nineties. They could result in sea monster
claims. Hocking River Ohio. Directly off the side of the canoe in clear water near upper part
of river. At first thought it was a tree with algae in water, then saw the head
and realized the "algae" was actually a frill. The animal was thicker
than my arm. The head was at the front of the 15ft Coleman canoe and the tail
end trailed behind my back seat. At the time this was amazing to both my father
and I. Only later did I come to fully appreciate how amazing this sighting was.
I got to see it the longest as we slowly passed it and I was in the back of the
boat. [The eel was] 12 to 15 ft.

The frill was
presumably the eel's long, low dorsal fin, which runs along almost the entire
length of the body in freshwater anguillid (true) eels. What makes this report
so exciting is that there is an unambiguous scale present in it – the known
length of the canoe, alongside which the eel was aligned, thereby making its
total length very easy to ascertain.

American
eel (public domain)

The only such
species recorded from Ohio is the common
American eel Anguilla rostrata, which
officially grows up to 4 ft long.
Consequently, judging from the scale provided by the canoe, the eel seen by
Chris and his father was 3-4 times longer than this species' official maximum
size.

Assuming their
report to be genuine (and I'm not aware of any reason to doubt it), there seems
little option but to assume, therefore, that bona fide giant freshwater eels do
indeed exist, at least in the Ohio waterways, which is a remarkable situation
and clearly of notable cryptozoological interest.

Few cryptozoologists will be unaware of the Naden Harbour
carcase – an enigmatic serpentine animal carcase measuring 10-12 ft long, sporting what looked like a camel-like head,
long neck, pectoral flippers or fins, a very elongate body, and a fringed tail-like
section that may have been a pair of hind limbs and/or a bona fide tail. It had
been removed from the stomach of a sperm whale by flensing (blubber-removing) workers in a whaling
station at NadenHarbour in Canada's Queen CharlotteIslands one day in early July 1937, and had then been placed by them on a long
table draped with a white cloth and photographed.

Tragically, the carcase is apparently long-vanished,
presumably discarded, but three photographs of it remain, and portray a
creature that is sufficiently strange in appearance to have incited considerable
controversy ever since as to its possible identity. Almost exactly 20 years ago
and based upon the surviving photographic evidence, Dr Ed L. Bousfield, currently
a Research Associate at Toronto's Royal Ontario Museum, and Prof. Paul H. LeBlond,
now retired from the Department of Oceanography at the University of British
Columbia in Vancouver, designated the Naden Harbour carcase (believed to be of a juvenile individual) as the type
specimen of the longstanding serpentiform mystery beast informally known as
Caddy or Cadborosaurus, the Cadboro Bay sea serpent, frequently reported off the
northern Pacific coast of Canada and the U.S.A. In a paper constituting a supplement
to the inaugural volume of the scientific journal Amphipacifica, published
on 20 April 1995, based
upon this specimen's morphology as seen in the photos they proposed that Caddy
was a living, modern-day species of plesiosaur and they formally named its
species Cadborosaurus willsi.

Far less familiar than the NadenHarbour carcase photographs, conversely, are two Caddy-linked pictures that were
first brought to my notice 20 years ago. To my knowledge, they had never
previously received any cryptozoological attention, and even today they remain
little-publicised. Consequently, this present ShukerNature article reviews for
the very first time the history and most notable opinions that have been offered
to date in relation to the tantalising object(s) that these pictures depict.

Unfortunately, she was not able to supply me with
any of the NadenHarbour images as these had not been placed with the FPL and there was some
degree of uncertainty concerning who owned their copyright at that time (they
are now in the public domain). So although I did document it in my book, I
couldn't illustrate my coverage with one of the pictures of it. Nevertheless,
Janet was able to find a couple of old picture postcards depicting an alleged
Caddy carcase washed up at Camp Fircom in British Columbia, Canada, on 4
October 1936 (less than a year before the Naden Harbour carcase was retrieved),
and which I had never seen before. Janet did not have any details concerning
these pictures on file other than the handwritten captions that were already printed
upon them, and I was unable to uncover any mention of them in any of the sources
of Caddy information available to me. (As for the actual postcards themselves,
I assume from their style and the rather primitive quality of their photographs
that they were originally on sale in the CampFircom area not long after the carcase had originally been discovered there.)

Frustratingly, moreover, the deadlines for writing
and submitting to the publishers each section of the book's text meant that by the
time that I'd received these interesting images, I'd already written and
submitted my full quota of allotted text for my book's Caddy entry, so I
couldn't have documented them there anyway. All that I could do, and which is
precisely what I did do, was include the more detailed of the two images
(Picture Postcard #1), tagged with the following informative caption: "Postcard
depicting an unusual marine carcase, possibly a Caddy, that was found on the
beach at Camp Fircom, British Columbia, on 4 October 1936".

The CampFircom Caddy carcase, Picture Postcard #1
(public domain/FPL)

In truth, however, the more that I looked at these pictures,
especially the close-up view afforded by Picture #1, the more confused I became
about what precisely I was looking at, because they certainly didn't resemble
the more traditional supposed sea serpent carcases that wash up from time to
time and invariably prove to be the highly decomposed, distorted remains of
sharks, whales, or oarfishes. Indeed, by the time that my book was published in
1996, I considered it likely that they showed nothing more than a collection of
sea-divulged debris, which may or may not have been artfully arranged by person(s)
unknown to look monstrous in every sense, and thence cash in (possibly
literally, via the sale of the picture postcards depicting this deceiving creation?)
on the tradition of sea monster sightings in this part of the world. Nevertheless,
I was pleased to have been able to include at least one of these puzzling pictures
in my book, just in case it elicited any responses from readers supplying additional
information or opinions relating to it. And sure enough, this is precisely what
happened.

During the second week of February 1997, I received
a detailed report from a then-university zoology student of Southampton, England, documenting his opinion as to what Picture #1
actually showed. That student is now palaeontologist Dr Darren Naish, who, like
me, has long been interested in cryptozoological subjects in addition to
mainstream zoology. Having viewed the photo at length in my book, Darren reported
that although there were certain superficial similarities to the Naden Harbour
carcase (large skull-like object with an apparent eye socket, long thin elongate
body with a pair of anterior lateral projections sited where pectoral fins might
be expected to be), he considered it to be a hoax – consisting of a montage of
objects that he suspected had been deliberately chosen and arranged to give the
impression of a carcase. The supposed skull, he felt, did not actually possess
any definite skull characters, and, tellingly, its eye socket, placed in just
the right location to resemble a true eye socket was, in Darren's view, the
shell of a mussel. As for the long elongate body, he considered this to be the
stem of a large plant, probably kelp, with finger-like projections at its
distal or 'tail' end resembling the root-like holdfasts that anchor kelp to
rocks. In short, a collection of marine/beach detritus deliberately positioned
to look like a serpentiform monster carcase, thus echoing my own view regarding
this.

Mindful that he hadn't seen Picture #2, I sent
Darren a photocopy of it, which he briefly referred to (and he also included sketches
of both pictures) within an expanded, illustrated version of the original
report that he had previously sent to me, which was published in the summer
1997 issue of The Cryptozoology Review, now defunct. In it, he
reaffirmed his opinion that the carcase was a composite of kelp, mussel shell,
and beach rocks. Interestingly, although I could see why he thought that the
eye socket in Picture #1's depiction of the skull-like object was a mussel
shell, in Picture #2 it seems to me to be a genuine socket, i.e. a hole,
because when this picture is enlarged I am sure that the seawater behind the skull-like
object can actually be seen through the socket. That aside, however, I definitely
concur and reaffirm that the Camp Fircom Caddy may be monstrous in form but is merely
a montage in nature.

The CampFircom Caddy carcase, Picture Postcard #2
(public domain/FPL)

Even so, are the main components of it truly botanical
rather than zoological in identity?

At much the same time that I was corresponding with
Darren regarding these two pictures, I was also awaiting a response from Prof. LeBlond,
to whom I had sent photocopies of the pictures, enquiring his opinion as to what
they may portray.

In his letter of reply, dated 3 March 1997, Prof. LeBlond noted that he had seen: "…pictures
of a lot of Caddy-like carcasses which have usually turned out to be sharks. Most
of them look a lot like the CampFircom picture". Of particular interest was his comment:

What makes me think that the Camp Fircom
carcass is yet another shark is the uniform roundness of the vertebrae,
especially as seen in the upper picture [Picture #1]. The NeahBay shark bones looked a lot like that: a
"log" made of a series of cylindrical vertebrae, without extensions
or projections.

Shark remains are sometimes found washed ashore at NeahBay
and elsewhere along the Pacific U.S. state of Washington's coast, and needless to say there are many cases
on file (from North America and elsewhere around the world) of such remains being
mistaken by eyewitnesses for sea serpent carcases.

Paul also stated that he had forwarded the
photocopied pictures to Dr Bousfield, who very kindly wrote to me on 27 August 1997 with his own comments regarding them:

I tend to agree with Paul that the CampFircom carcase is very probably that of a
basking shark. Local beach carcasses that have been attributed to
"Caddy"-like animals appear similar to the remains of your
photograph. Virtually all such remains, reported (with photographs) during the
past 70+ years, have proven to be those of the large pelagic shark species
common in surface waters of the North American Pacific coastal marine region.

The only photographs considered by us as
reliably that of a "Caddy" carcass, are three fairly good images,
taken from three different camera angles by two different photographers, at the
Naden Harbour whaling station in 1937, and now deposited in the B.C. Provincial
Archives here in Victoria.

Two of the three NadenHarbour carcase photographs are included in their book Cadborosaurus:
Survivor From the Deep, published during the same year, 1995, as their more
formal Amphipacifica paper.

So might the Camp Fircom Caddy carcase be a
highly-decomposed shark, or at least include some shark-derived components within
a heterogeneous array of objects?

For a long time, this enigmatic entity attracted
little if any additional attention other than its two pictures featuring in a handful
of East European cryptozoological websites but with no attendant comments
concerning them. In a guest article regarding the NadenHarbour carcase that appeared in Jay Cooney's Bizarre Zoology blog on 17 June 2013, however, Florida-based cryptozoologist Scott
Mardis did briefly refer to the CampFircom carcase and included Picture #1. After noting Darren's opinion regarding
its composition and then comparing it to some illustrations of basking shark vertebrae,
Scott commented: "I'm not so sure, because it looks very basking sharky to
me", and I agree that there is indeed a notable degree of similarity
between the supposed carcase's elongate body and the vertebral column of a
shark.

On 17 February of this present year, Darren posted
his detailed sketch of Picture #1 on his Facebook page's timeline and tagged me
in his post. He also now opined that the carcase's body certainly resembled a
shark's vertebral column (thus updating his original identification of it as a
possible plant stem back in his article from 1997), but remained unsure as to
the nature of the carcase's other components. This elicited on my own Facebook
page's timeline a number of detailed responses from German cryptozoological
researcher Markus Bühler, who illustrated them with relevant images obtained
online. Like Paul, Ed, Scott, myself, and now Darren too, Markus favoured a
shark identity for at least some of the objects constituting the Camp Fircom
Caddy carcase, and I am summarising as follows the various points that he raised
in relation to this.

Screenshot of the opening posts in
the Camp Fircom Caddy carcase discussion thread on my Facebook page's timeline –
there were far too many posts to include screenshots of the entire thread, but
it yielded an extremely interesting exchange of views

With respect to the carcase's supposed skull,
Markus considered that Picture #1 possibly does show a cranium with a hole, but
in a predominantly dorsal view, so that the hole is not an eye socket but is
instead the epiphyseal foramen (a large dorsally-sited cranial opening that houses
the pineal body in living sharks). If so, then the projections above and below
it could be the upper parts of the laterally-sited eye orbits. He also noted
that the skull may be from a shark but not a basking shark, perhaps instead from
a species with very different cranial proportions from those of a basking shark,
which could explain why it does not provide an exact match with a basking shark
cranium.

Markus considered that shark-derived contributions
to the carcase might principally consist of its cranium and vertebral column,
but he did also wonder whether, if so, the finger-like projections at the
right-hand side of the carcase's body, originally labelled as kelp holdfasts by
Darren, may be parts of the shark's fin rays and he posted some online photos
of a fully defleshed shark carcase found underwater that bore exposed fin rays
resembling the 'fingers' of the Camp Fircom conglomerate. In addition, as he
correctly pointed out, in some species of shark the spinal column between
cranium and caudal fin is surprisingly short, so these 'fingers' may
specifically be exposed rays from the lower lobe of the shark's caudal fin.

Concluding the CampFircom carcase discussion thread on my FB timeline, Darren reflected that he'd
never considered that a shark may have contributed to this creation when
preparing his original article, but still felt that its overall appearance was
the result of an assortment of debris and that this was the key point. That is,
the alleged Camp Fircom Caddy carcase was merely a conglomeration of objects
from different sources, not a single entity – and I agree entirely with this
assessment.

Regardless of whether its body derives from kelp or
a shark, or whether its 'fingers' are holdfasts or fin rays, or whether its
skull is a rock or a shark cranium, or whether the latter object's hole is an
eye socket or an epiphyseal foramen or even just a deceptive mussel shell,
there can be no doubt that what the Camp Fircom composite is not, and never
could be, is a deceased Caddy. In short, this is one cryptozoological carcase (and
mystery) that, finally, not so much rests in peace as in pieces – very different
pieces from a range of very different origins.

I wish to offer my sincere thanks to Dr Ed Bousfield,
Markus Bühler, Prof. Paul LeBlond, Scott Mardis, and especially Dr Darren Naish
for sharing their views with me concerning the Camp Fircom Caddy carcase, and
to Janet Bord of the Fortean Picture Library for so kindly bringing its two
picture postcard images to my attention all those years ago.

Monday, 2 March 2015

Never in the long and very diverse history of
spiders – a very significant arachnid order (Araneae) whose lineage dates back
more than 300 million years according to the known fossil record – has there
ever been a spider with wings. And why should there be? Virtually all spiders
display a lifestyle that has no place or need in it for wings, relying upon
stealth and ambush to survive and to capture their prey, not flamboyant aerial
activity like some bizarre eight-legged dragonfly. Nevertheless, this has not
prevented flying spiders from winging their way every so often through both
hard-copy and online media reports – to the delight of connoisseurs of the
strange and uncanny, and to the despair of hardcore arachnophobes! So here are
three of the most entertaining and engrossing accounts that I have seen which
showcase these faux yet fabulous fliers of the spider kind.

A WINGED TERROR ON TUMBLR

During 2012, several users of the website Tumblr
posted online what initially looked like a bona fide but unidentified newspaper
clipping of a supposedly newly-discovered species of winged spider. The
clipping consisted of a b/w photograph of the spider in question, entitled
'Scientist discovers winged spider', but with no accompanying details concerning
it or its discovery. A close look at the photo, however, soon revealed that it
was a not-especially efficient exercise in image manipulation of the
photoshopped variety. The spider depicted was in fact a common (and wingless!) species
of fishing (aka raft) spider belonging to the genus Dolomedes.

The fake report of a winged spider
featuring a photoshopped image of an ordinary wolf spider (creator/s unknown)

In addition, as later revealed on the famous
hoax-busting Snopes website as well as on several others too, the original
photograph of it that had subsequently been manipulated by person(s) unknown to
yield the winged spider is one that had been snapped on 23 September 2007 at
Durham in North Carolina by Will Cook from Duke University in Durham, and had
appeared (it still does in fact) on the website North Carolina Spider Photos (here
is a direct link to this photo on the latter website).

On 10 March 2014, the fake clipping and photo were
revisited by the website of a UK computer services company, Digital Plumbing,
which provided an extensive report about them, including details of how the
winged spider, which in this report was unscientifically named Volat-Araneus
(it should have been the other way around and italicised, of course, i.e. Araneus
volat, if the aim was for it to resemble a genuine taxonomic binomial),
preyed upon the poisonous (and real) false widow spider Steatoda nobilis.

A false widow spider Steatoda
nobilis (public domain)

However, the report was peppered with clues that it
was a hoax, and indeed, halfway through it its (unnamed) writer confessed this
openly, explaining that the report's sole purpose had been to attract the
attention of readers, who would now, the writer hoped, take note that this
website was that of a company offering technology repairs and other services,
as detailed in the remainder of the report. In short, Digital Plumbing's report was a very
novel marketing ploy, quite possibly the first one ever to utilise a
non-existent winged spider to attract potential customers.

A WINGED SPIDER VIDEO AND A WINGLESS MISNOMER

Flying spider #2 has only appeared once (to my
knowledge) – as an even less convincing photoshopped image presented in an
extremely brief YouTube video uploaded on 15 October 2013 by Brian Griffin
under the title 'Have Scientists Discovered a Winged Spider?' (click here
to watch it).

In it, mention is made of the fact that a species
called the long-winged kite spider is already known to science. This is
perfectly true, the species in question being a forest-dweller known formally as Gasteracantha
versicolor, which is native to the subtropics and tropics of eastern,
central, and southern Africa, as well as Madagascar. However, 'long-winged' is
something of a misnomer, because its 'wings' are not of the membranous,
flight-producing variety. Instead, they are a pair of immobile sclerotised
spines, borne laterally upon the opisthosoma or abdominal section of this
spider's body in the adult female.

Far older and also far more intriguing than the
previous two examples is the third member of this trio of winged wonders – albeit
this time a truly grotesque Lovecraftian horror, a cryptic cryptid from the
crypts in fact, known as the Italian tomb spider.

I first learnt of this macabre entity courtesy of
British cryptozoological archive peruser Richard Muirhead, who sent me an
unlabelled review report of an article that had originally appeared in the Pall
Mall Gazette. Happily, I was soon able to trace the original source of this
review report – namely, the San Francisco Call, which had published it
on 29 November 1896.
The report makes such compelling if unnerving reading that I am reproducing it
in its entirety below – the first time, as far as I am aware, that it has ever
appeared in an online cryptozoological article:

San Francisco Call, Volume 80, Number 182, 29
November 1896

ITALY'S TOMB SPIDER

A Thing So Odd That It is Believed to
Exist Only in Imagination.

The people of Italy believe in the existence of a wonderful
creature which, for the want of a better name, is called the tomb spider. The entomologists
know nothing of this queer beast, and declare that it only exists in the fancy
of the superstitious persons and those whose curiosity or business makes it
necessary for them to explore old ruins, tombs, catacombs, etc. According to
the popular account the tomb spider is of a pure white color, has wings like
those of a bat, a dozen horrid crooked legs and a body three or four times the
size of the largest tropical American tarantula.

The accounts of this queer insect and
his out-of-the-way places of abode are by no means common, and on that account
the information concerning him which we will be able to give the
"curious" is very meager. Any Italian will tell you that such a
creature exists, however, and that he is occasionally met with in old mines and
caverns, as well as in tombs and subterranean ruins. The London Saturday Review
has an article from a correspondent who was present when some Roman workmen
unearthed a church of the fifth century. He says: "We were standing by one
of the heavy pillars that had originally supported the roof, when something
flashed down from the pitchy darkness overhead and paused full in the
candle-light beside us, at about a level with our eyes. It was distinctly as
visible as a thing could be at a distance of three feet, and appeared to be an
insect about half the size of a man's fist, white as wax and with its many long
legs gathered in a bunch as it crouched on the stone.

"Our guide had seen, or at least
heard of this uncanny insect of ill omen before, but was by no means reconciled
to its presence, as his notions proved. He glanced around uncomfortably for a
moment and then moved away, we following. It seems really a bit queer, but it
is said that the strongest nerves give way in the presence of this insect of such
ghostly mien. Even today this uncanny apparition is said to be an unclassified
monster — an eternal mystery. When the grave spider is encountered by those
opening tombs and vaults it is thought to be a 'sign' of death to one of the
workmen or some member of his family." - Pall Mall Gazette.

An almost identical account also appeared in another American newspaper,
the Sausalito News, on 23 January 1897.

Vintage engraving of catacombs

What can we say about such a bizarre report? The spider, if indeed we can apply
such a name to a creature sporting wings and a dozen legs, is unlike any life
form known either upon or beneath the surface of Planet Earth, even if we
generously assume that it may be a grossly exaggerated or embroidered description
of a pallid form of bat or an exceptionally large moth.

Interestingly, as I documented in my book The Encyclopaedia of New and Rediscovered Animals
(2012), a dramatically new species of large cavernicolous spider with a pure
white abdomen (opithosoma) was discovered by science in quite recent
times, amid
the deeper regions of Koloa Cave on the Hawaiian island of Kauai and a few
others on this same island's southeastern coast, yielding six populations in
total. Formally dubbed Adelocosa anops in 1973, this spelaean spider
(sole member of its genus) delights in a very contradictory common name - the
no-eyed big-eyed wolf spider! The reason for this stems from Adelocosa's
membership of a taxonomic family of wolf spiders whose species are generally
typified by very large, well-developed eyes, and are thus called big-eyed wolf
spiders. In the case of Adelocosa, however, its ancestors apparently
abandoned a traditional above-ground lifestyle in favour of a
highly-specialised subterranean one instead - in which eyes were superfluous.
Consequently, during the resulting evolution of this much-modified
cave-dwelling species, they were eventually lost, thus explaining the apparent
paradox of a no-eyed big-eyed spider.

Although made known to science only fairly recently, this
distinctive spider has long been familiar to Kauai's indigenous
people, who call it pe'e pe'e maka'ole. It is easily identified not only
by its lack of eyes but also by its long and semi-transparent, orange-coloured
legs (the normal complement of eight in number), its orange-brown cephalothorax
(combined head-and-body section), and its ghostly white opisthosoma. Needless
to say, however, it does not possess wings!

The
Hawaiian no-eyed big-eyed spider (public domain)

As for the Italian tomb spider that does allegedly possess wings,
conversely: during the 19th Century, gruesome, highly fanciful yarns
of this nature were a popular genre of journalistic reportage, invented purely for
entertainment purposes and never meant to be taken seriously, although they
sometimes were – especially by the more credulous and less perspicacious of
readers. In my opinion, this San Francisco Call report from 1896 is
clearly a prime example from such a genre.

Having said that, however, I'd still be interested to read the article from
the London Saturday Review referred to in the latter report (always assuming
that such an article does exist), just in case its telling of the tale of
Italy's dreaded tomb or grave spider is any less lurid and rather more
believable. After all, even an account of a wingless spider sporting only the
standard octet of legs typical for its kind but which is unusually large in
size, is ghostly-white in colour, and exclusively inhabits crypts, catacombs,
and other subterranean residences of the deceased would be sufficiently
distinct from all recognised spider species to warrant more than passing
interest from arachnologists and cryptozoologists alike.

So if anyone reading this present ShukerNature blog article can trace and
send to me a copy of the relevant Saturday Review article, I'd very much
like to see it – thanks very much!

BALLOONING SPIDERS AND ANGEL HAIR

Finally: although spiders, being wingless, cannot actively fly, some
species can and do practise a type of passive gliding known as ballooning, which
is often linked directly to a semi-mysterious phenomenon known as angel hair.

Angel hair is
the name given to long, white, gossamer-like filaments that descend earthward
often in vast quantities, cloaking meadows, streets, houses, or anything else
that they land upon with their ethereal, silken strands. But what is
angel hair - and where does it come from? Many eyewitnesses describe angel hair
as resembling spider webs, and in most (though not all) cases this is indeed
what it probably is (but see my book Dr Shuker's Casebook (2008) for some angel hair reports that clearly do not
involve spider gossamer).

A
sheet web composed of gossamer and woven by Linyphia hortensis, a
species of money spider (Wikipedia)

Very few reports
of angel hair actually mention the presence of spiders amid the shroud-like
sheets and threads drifting downwards or discovered festooning the ground. Yet
there is little doubt that this gauzy, filamentous material is merely an
aggregation of threads produced by congregations of tiny money spiders (belonging
to the family Linyphiidae) in order to become airborne by a process known as
ballooning.

A
money spider (public domain)

Silken threads
drawn out of their spinnerets when the spiders face a strong wind are lifted,
together with the attached spiders, into the air by the wind and carried aloft,
the spiders sometimes travelling great distances before finally gliding back to
earth. Once there, they simply abandon their threads, yielding spiderless,
gossamer-like sheets called angel hair - as confirmed on several occasions by
analysis of samples collected.

In short: apart from ballooning spiders, these eight-legged arachnids are
reassuringly earthbound, and all are indefatigably wingless – unless you live
in Italy and are well-versed in folklore appertaining to grim subterranean
realms, and featuring encounters with monstrous creatures that never penetrate
up into the light of day, something for which we can all be very thankful,
especially if the tomb spider is a typical respresentative of this shadowy
fauna of the catacombs and crypts.

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